


Continue?

by Sidekick_Salohcin



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Don't @ Me, F/M, Furthest Ring (Homestuck), Karezi, They deserved better, Work In Progress, but do comment please, but especially Karezi, even some weird ones perhaps, gonna try to give people the development they deserved, this is a wip I want to finish and any input is helpful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-27 04:43:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19783504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sidekick_Salohcin/pseuds/Sidekick_Salohcin
Summary: What else is there to do after Game Over? You can't always get a second chance to go back, but you can still keep going and make your own ending.This will follow Karkat and Terezi's meandering through the Furthest Ring after the events of [S] Game Over. How better to work out some closure than potential eternity and infinite negative space to explore.





	Continue?

**Author's Note:**

> Howdy! So! This has been sitting in my folders for too long! To give myself some sense of progress to help me finish them, I'm just gonna post them and update them as my motivation moves me. I know every writer says that comments are appreciated but believe me when I say that comments are extremely appreciated! Especially for this process of trying to overcome the collective blocks I face with these fics. If you have anything to say, criticism or praise or anything, know you are completely welcome to say so! You are the Rainbow Connection of your comment section! I assure you I will read each and every one and try to reply to them all.

Screaming. Burning agony. Pain in every atom of his body. This is how Karkat Vantas entered the Furthest Ring. His body coiled, his eyes screwed tight, and his arms wrapped around his sides as he writhed in phantom pain. Eventually the burning pain ebbed into cold numbness and his screams weakened to whimpers. He opened his eyes and saw an unfortunately familiar place.

“Fuck, this place?” he rasped. He looks around, miasmic void, cerebral topography, glimmers of memories in every direction. “Yup…fuck, why am I here?” He sees a small pond nearby and walks towards it to splash some water on his face and quench his dry throat. “Jegus, what was that shit about?” His head was drawing static as he tried to wake up, especially when it came to how he fell asleep. “Wait did crazy Jade or the robot girl knock me out? ...No..no. Then there was all the fighting…then didn’t I fight? What was I fighting about?” After a few seconds his mind barked ‘Terezi!’ and memories started flooding back. “No! No no no no, fuck, no!! I was next to Kanaya, Gamzee was hurting Terezi, uh..uhhh! What else happened, what else happened!?!” 

He fell to his knees and clenched his head as the area around him started to blur into the last memories he could pull. He watched himself charge forward from Kanaya’s side, sickles drawn. And to his horror he saw Gamzee effortlessly knock him back into the surrounding lava; and as he looked down at himself sinking deeper in the burning lake, the entire scene evaporates. The lake returns to the pond and his face is replaced with his reflection, staring back at him with blank eyes.

“I’m dead……” His whole body slumps as he bends down, head still in his hands, elbows on the ground, and eyes fixated on his reflection. “I try to save my friends from that maniac and I die!! What kind of Knight of Blood am I!? I can’t even do the one thing I was meant to! I couldn’t even save her!...” His thoughts start to spiral in repeat as his angry sobs escape. His cries start to mix with a growl rising in his throat until he screams and starts pounding the ground. “That’s it! That’s the last punchline in the comedy show of my life! After seven and a half sweeps of pure comedic gold that is Karkat Vantas, /THAT’S/ the joke I leave on! How fitting! I started the show telling them how pathetic my every attempt is but they didn’t think it would come around at the very end where I CAN’T! EVEN! DO! THE ONE THING! THAT THE UNIVERSE TOLD ME I WAS MADE TO DO!”

His fists and jaw were clenched tight as his gut twisted into knots. The knots get tighter and tighter, and then snap. Karkat stands, no longer shaking. “That couldn’t have been the end of it. The others must’ve done something. I may have been useless, but that means that me dying didn’t automatically lose the battle for them. I have to find out what happened.” He picks one of the many nebulous paths and starts walking.

What felt like hours passed. “How have I not run into anything yet? Before I couldn’t take two steps without winding up in some memory or dream or gathering of dead creeps. I’d even settle for Kankri right now.” As if on cue he bumped into someone as he looked around, looking up he sees a red sweater and the source of endless dread from his past excursions in the Furthest Ring.

“Oh! I’m so extremely sorry, I didn’t see you walking there. I hope you can forgive my interrupting your journey or any negative connotations I could have towards the invisible or invisible-identifying persons, lack-of-body-shaming is still a very present issue today and I wouldn’t want to come off as insensitive to such a problem that countless people-or perhaps not people as it were, depending on their personal identity of choice is-still suffer with to this day and furthermore—”

‘How does he always have a political dissertation ready on the fly? I mean half of them are recycled, even this one sounds just like the first time I ran into him…wait’ As Karkat looked around he saw a very familiar building. He looked up to where he remembered Porrim being. “Wait am I in a memory bubble of when I was in another memory bubble? Does that mean I’m back there or someplace new?” he mumbled to himself.

“Both are correct.” Damnit he was talking again. “Since arriving in the Furthest Ring, I’ve studied the perspectives and plights of the bubbles and negative space that make it up, because of our living privilege we were all blind before to the insensitive way we categorize dream bubbles and how they occupy space. Truly, each bubble has its own identity and the fact that you would imply that the space it exists as is not congruent with how it identifies blatantly shows me that you having made no progress since our last meeting. Though I can merit you on recognizing you were in a memory meant to readjust you to where you are, many people take much longer and oblige unwilling bubbles to project scenes and images that go against their true self-designation.”

“For goodness’ sakes, leave the poor kid alone Kankri. Can’t you see he’s just passed?” Kankri turned and glared at Porrim who had her arms crossed. “Come with me Karkat, I’m sure you have a lot to ask.” Karkat didn’t waste a second following her.

“Stop right there Maryam! He doesn’t need your—”

“Let’s find someplace more peaceful.” Porrim gave a sly grin to her impromptu ward. They walked on for a while as the world around them had shifted to another winding grey path. Karkat remained silent, simply walking alongside Porrim. “Come now, why do you go quiet every time you see him?” Still nothing, he just looks down at his feet. She stopped in front of him and placed her hands on his shoulder, startling the boy to look up at her. “Where are we going? Think of the one place you need to see right now. I can help you make sense of all this, but you’ll need to focus.”

Soundless and a little embarrassed about his pouting, Karkat heeded her words. He cycled through many places: his hive, the meteor, even sparing a thought for the Land of Pulse and Haze. Despite having lived in all these places, none seemed to offer any comfort or catharsis, right now he needed a place that wouldn’t be so grey or dismal or hard. The last place he could remember really wanting to be was a dense forest, calm and beautiful when you could take the time to appreciate it.

“There we go” The matronly troll smiled “Lead the way, I’m sure you got somewhere in mind.” Karkat silently made way towards a particular tree, large and stout, and sat at its base. He rested his head on the trunk and ran his fingers through the grass, surprised that he could feel it all more vividly than previous excursions to a dream bubble. Porrim sat beside him, giving him a bit of space and a second to get settled before prompting again. “Do you want to talk about what brought you here or do you have questions you want answered?”

“Not much to say about my death; I died as I lived: pathetically. I was always a non-factor, so I shouldn’t be surprised, I just thought for once I could make a difference just because it was important to me. I used to never think about all that Maid of Shit, Thief of Fuck bullshit, felt like smoke being blown up our asses to give us some false sense of meaning to chase. But like an idiot I let myself believe it after so long, I had always wanted to be someone that could protect all of my stupid friends, maybe if I could just do that we could find some peace we never had during that bullshit game or even back home on Alternia…”

“It sounds like there was much to say.” Porrim prodded with a smile, which quickly faded as she turned to see red tears streaming down his face, wearing a blank broken expression.

“I was useless, why did I survive so long if I was just meant to do nothing? Why couldn’t the others have lived instead of me? Sollux could have done so much! Feferi didn’t deserve to die, and I didn’t even do anything to stop Eridan from going off the deep end! Fuck, even Eridan would have been more useful than me!” By now, his face went from blank to barely holding on, his face alone expressing the full body pain he felt. Porrim took this as the cue to close the distance and give him a shoulder to cry on. “I couldn’t even be there for any of them! That fucking meteor was the most miserable sweeps of my life! I couldn’t keep that fucking clown tranquilized, I closed myself off from everyone, and…” And then he broke again, this time letting all the noise out as he wailed. “I WASN’T THERE FOR HER! I KNEW SHE WAS GOING THROUGH SO MUCH SHIT! SHE WAS GETTING WASTED ON THAT DAMN DRINK AND SHE WAS IN SUCH A BAD BLACKROM! But she didn’t want me anymore…even then when I tried to help, I didn’t do anything but sound like a fool…”

Porrim could do nothing but maintain the embrace, there was a lot to unpack but not while his heart was on the floor. She almost thought she heard him starting to muffle into her again until she realized it was coming from above. She looked up to see the same troll boy in her arms approaching Latula’s dancestor, who was trying to disappear into her dragon cape. She does her best to make out the conversation, this clearly being the reason he conjured this place. As the Karkat clinging to her simmered down into soft sobs, she heard the Karkat above trying to console the girl. Delicacy was not his strong suit, but he made up for it in conviction; and she was willing to overlook the comment about her and her friends being mostly assholes, he wasn’t wrong. At some point the boy in her arms must have realized what was happening above as he went silent and would squeeze his hands at certain things being said, particularly when admitting he ruined what they may have had. As the conversation petered out, silence filled the space again.

“Yeah, just like th—” He looked up as Porrim shushed him and motioned for him to look up; he saw Terezi start to follow where he had exited.

“Y’know the nice things about these bubbles is they let you see beyond what you did in life. Would you like to see what happened next? I know from experience that we affected much more than we ever see.”

He looked too scared to be hopeful, but then too curious to say no. She stands and helps him up and the scene around them starts to shift once more, the new location is lost on Porrim but Karkat of course recognizes his own respiteblock. Once again he can’t help but notice how much more real it feels; previously he felt like every dream bubble was an impression, but now it feels as real as his real block did when he was alive. As he runs his hand along his desk, he sees everything start to shimmer again, this time his own arm does too. His nails become a little sharper, his sleeves shorten to his elbow and as he looks down he sees a teal symbol replace his grey. He turns to ask Porrim what’s happened but only sees Meenah Piexes, just chilling.

He jumps back and starts to shout in confusion…or he would, instead his form walks over to Meenah with no regards to his intentions. He thinks to ask her what’s going on, but instead he speaks to her in another voice, in Terezi’s voice, asking the fish girl if she’s seen him. As the words pass through him, he feels the unspoken intention behind them. His own consciousness seems subliminal to the deep, heavy weight in her chest, as she’s trying to find him to continue the conversation he just left. Meenah says she was waiting for him too, how the room changed around her as Terezi entered, and contemplates if she’s going on a date with Karkat or if she misread the situation. As Terezi, he feels the weight sink and toss around as she loses hope on finding him; as a firsthand observer in all this, he’s calmed down enough to grasp what this means.

She went looking for him, but couldn’t because of Furthest Ring shenanigans, shifting her path from his and getting weird signals from this ghost. The conversation ends with Meenah complimenting her dragon cape and he feels her smile before the scene washes out and is replaced with his dumbstruck face and he’s looking at Porrim once more.

“It sounds to me you did more than just sound like a fool.” Porrim places a hand on his shoulder and gives him a warm reassuring smile.

“What…what happened? I…could feel everything…”

“You were part of the Dream Bubble, and just like in dreams, you could know more than just what an outside observer would. These work a little differently for you now that you’re not just passing through as a living consciousness.”

“So you guys can just play out anyone’s extremely personal moments?”

“The lines are a little foggy, but usually somebody from the moment has to be present. Occasionally you’ll get one where someone present was just very relevant, like what just happened.” Porrim starts leading Karkat down another empty grey path, like they’re taking just a casual stroll in the park except in afterlife meta space. “So, what’s next for you?”

“Huh? What do you mean? I’m dead, everything’s over. There’s no ‘next’ for me.”

“On the contrary, there’s a lot of next. I’ve been here for an eternity, even if nothing I’ve done has effected some greater series of events, there’s been a lot of next. Just because you lose relevancy, doesn’t mean your existence loses meaning; or rather if you let it, you’re going to have a miserable eternity. I’ve already seen you have some unresolved business, what do you need to make peace?”

“Oh yeah, fuck…I was trying to find out if everyone else made it out alive. There was a big fight going on, seemed like everything was hinging on it. I…didn’t really accomplish anything, so I want to see if there’s just some consolation, if everyone else made it out okay.”

“Hmm, news from the living world is pretty sparse, especially from your specific world. You should try and find Aranea, she always liked keeping up to date with things. Right now you probably know the most of what’s happened, as you’re potentially the most recent arrival, but she may have some insight.”

“Aranea, got it. I guess I’ll head out my own way and go look for her, I’ll maybe see you around.”

“We’ll see, the Furthest Ring is a big place. Good luck finding your peace.”

“Bye.” Karkat starts to walk ahead before stopping short in his tracks. A solid beat and he’s turned on his heels and walks back to Porrim and hugs her. “And thanks for helping me with all this…” And with that he returns to walking off as he gives her a quick wave goodbye. Porrim watches him go with a smile before turning and starting to wonder down her own path.


End file.
